Melbourne has a secret.
Actually, Melbourne has many secrets. Its best bars, shops and
restaurants are hidden away, behind anonymous doors and up
concealed staircases, but nothing is quite so carefully tucked out
of sight as the Melburnians' weekend playground, an hour south of
the city: the delicious beaches and tree-lined vineyards of the
Mornington Peninsula.

I've been coming here since the 1970s, about the same time my
Melbourne relatives realised that the old money
was clustered out on the furthest point at Portsea
and Sorrento, leaving the rest of the peninsula -
orchards and wide, sun-dappled roads fringed with pale-barked gum
trees and pervaded by amber butterflies and the clear scent of
eucalyptus - for newcomers. And soon they began looking at their
new land and empty wine cellars, and wondering whether the former
couldn't be used to fill the latter.

Elsewhere in Australia,
thirsty Swiss-German immigrants planted vines enthusiastically -
and successfully - as soon as they landed in the 19th century. In
Mornington, however, the first English arrivals to
attempt winemaking (the Balcombes, at a property called the Briars, in the
1850s) were so unsuccessful that their short-lived output was
nicknamed Briars' Vinegar. Over 100 years later, some of those
Melbourne escapees tried again, deciding that the area's cool
climate was perfect for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, the grapes of
Burgundy, or Champagne. Unlike
Mornington, neither of those well-known regions has water on three
sides (both are landlocked). Nor does their limestone soil resemble
ancient volcanic granite. And neither has ever been in much danger
of bushfires, or vine damage by kangaroos. So it's no surprise that
Mornington Peninsula's wines didn't turn out French at all.

Nevertheless, those winemakers were soon talking up the area as
the Burgundy of the southern hemisphere. And being Australians, no
sooner did they begin making decent wine than they opened
restaurants alongside the vineyards to drink it in, which was handy
for visitors but may not have helped the area's identity crisis.
(Burgundy has great restaurateurs and great winemakers. They are
not the same people.) My first experience of the peninsula was
naked in an oak barrel: I was five. My father's cousins had spent
their time planting vines instead of building a swimming pool, so
they'd filled a barrel with water and were oak-ageing the children
alongside their wines. By the time I had grown too big for that
barrel, the early adopters had been joined by various other
wineries, and farm-gate stores, restaurants and delis were
springing up like the patches of wild mushrooms that knowing locals
hunt down, then jealously guard, each autumn.

At lunch in the glass-walled
cellar-door restaurant of the Paringa
Estate, its owner Lindsay McCall recalls those early days.
'There were only about six of us making wine then,' he says
wistfully, as we inhale his aromatic, blackcurrant-and-peppery 2009
Paringa Shiraz with the pinkest slice of grass-fed sirloin.

McCall might lament that now he can't even get a table in his
own restaurant on a Saturday night but the fact that the
peninsula's food scene is catching up with the wine is good news
for everyone else. Paringa has a Chef Hat, the Australian
equivalent of a Michelin star, and there's a handful of other
Hatted restaurants nearby: La Pétanque, where they smoke aioli, pickle
daikon and purée capsicum as easily as most of us toast bread, and
Terminus at Flinders Hotel, which mixes up
North African, French and local flavours with impressive fluency.
Many of the other winery restaurants - Montalto, Polperro, Yabby Lake - are sophisticated too, but even
then, there's none of the folded-napkin superiority of French fine
dining, which may be why Australia has never opened its doors to
the Michelin Guide.

In fact, Mornington's soil has been as fruitful for its food
scene as it has for its winemakers. There is a farmers' market in
almost every small town. Hot Melbourne chefs nip down weekly to
forage for ingredients or buy supplies - between a spot of surfing.
Even the breweries and cider-makers serve good food: at Red Hill
Brewery the barbecues are laden with beef brisket and pulled
pork, and the cider lounge at Mock Red Hill orchards serves platters of local
produce and cheese. Perhaps it's a hangover from the First Fleet,
back in New South Wales in 1788, almost starving
to death, or maybe it's just that the Mornington Peninsula is such
a great place to grow, cook and serve food, but nobody here seems
able to do anything without throwing in a meal alongside.

One rare exception is Aaron Drummond of Circe wines -
but then, his 'tasting room' is a barrel and two stools, so dinner
would be a stretch. He is one of Australia's freshest crop of
winemakers, still working in a big Yarra Valley
winery while he pursues his dream down here in his free time. It
may not be paying the rent yet, but his Pinot is some of the
brightest I've ever had - and, like its maker, says nothing about
Burgundy.

Hot Melbourne chefs nip down weekly to forage for
ingredients or buy supplies - between a spot of
surfing

The people who really did come
down here and see something familiar were not French or English but
the Greeks and Italians who, after arriving in Melbourne after
World War II, took their families to the tumbledown streets and
west-coast beaches of Dromana. 'These days Dromana
is a lot smarter,' says John Filiopoulos, and he is one of the
people making that happen. Greek-Australian himself, he is co-owner
of Dee's
Kitchen, a stripped-back, laid-back café five minutes from the
beach, with Dee Busani-Caligiuri, who was originally Israeli: two
Australians by descent, far from their native Mediterranean, making
great food by a rather different sea.

Dee's could be a beach caff, except for the heaving wine shelves
that decorate the distressed walls. Or perhaps, I think, tucking
into squeaky-fresh trout and local beetroot, dill and peas on
homemade toast, Mornington Peninsula just has a better class of
caff.

As I eat, Garry Crittenden walks in. Another of the region's
wine pioneers, he picked up on that Mediterranean vibe. At their
lakeside winery the Crittendens make light, easy-drinking Italian
whites - Vermentino and Pinot Grigio - as well as Italy's great
reds, Sangioviese and Nebbiolo - 'the greatest variety in the
world,' according to Crittenden. Others are catching on, but the
region won't be giving up on French roots any time soon.

Some plants, like some people, move easily between places: Pinot
Noir and Chardonnay are called international varieties for a good
reason. But these transplants don't stay the same. The avocados and
cherries they grow in Mornington Peninsula's cool pine forests are
richer and riper than their Old World forebears. They have adapted
to a jutting slice of land that varies from forest to orchard to
vineyard to surf-swept beaches thick with wattle and tea-tree
scrub, just as the people have, both in accent and in understanding
of their land.

My next stop, Port Phillip Estate, is a transplant if ever
there was one. From the outside, it's an uncompromising wall of
rammed earth; once inside, the whole curved inner wall is glass,
and the vineyards unfold before you. Waking in one of the elegant
suites and looking out on that sweeping view was such a joy that I
wondered why the Burgundians had never tried something like this.
But the sensibility is entirely different. For Australians, the
pleasures of the table should be shared as widely as possible. The
expansiveness of New World hospitality seems to suit a place so
generously endowed with space.

On my last day, I walk up to Arthurs Seat, the
highest point, and look out beyond Dromana across to the
Bellarine Peninsula, which comes round to meet the
tip at Portsea like arms encircling Port Phillip Bay. It's a
spectacular view, with woolly dark trees jostling low-lying
buildings, and the water shining blue between the embrace of the
bay's coastline. Turn south, though, and there's nothing but Tasmania between here and Antarctica. I feel a
moment's pity for those first English settlers: homesick travellers
who couldn't even make decent wine to take the edge off their
longing for the old country. Instead, they named their towns for
England's south coast - Shoreham and
Rye and Hastings - an exercise in
magical thinking even more wishful than trying to reimagine this
fertile strip as a New World Burgundy. But why bother with
comparisons? You don't see the Burgundians hankering after beaches,
avocado groves and pickled daikon. The only way in which this place
really needs to copy the French is by shrugging off those
comparisons and enjoying being a wine- and food-lover's nirvana -
and an entirely Australian one, at that.

The dilemma in this open-plan expanse is what to look at:
the cellar-door bar clustered with tasters; the fermentation tanks
visible in the room below; the 180-degree view of the
vineyards; or chef Julian Hills's intricate food, where
snapper is crowned with shellfish and sprinkled with grains, and
duck is jazzed up with cured watermelon rind.

Stuart Bell's food has won this restaurant two Chef Hats.
Ultra-locally sourced - much of it in the large kitchen gardens -
it is also very pretty: the prawn and cauliflower risotto is
topped with deep green dill yogurt and tiny violet
flowers.

Samantha Fitzgerald co-owns this much-loved spot with her
husband Andrew, who is now chef at Polperro. The traditional look
(wooden beams and velvet-covered church pews) is belied by the
food, which mixes the output of neighbouring farms - beets,
mushrooms, broccolini - with more distant influences, from boudin
noir to wagyu beef.

The name comes from the habit two 1930s fox trappers had of
hanging their daily catch on a nearby gum tree, but now Foxeys is a
buzzy spot in which to drink its lively wines and enjoy a
blackboard menu of small plates.

Between an orchard and a winery is this deceptively large house,
shaded by a giant sequoia tree. A little suntrap parlour looks
out towards the original worker's cottage; a charming hideaway for
two with its own wetroom, kitchen and veranda bath.

Balnarring has plenty of waterfront properties, which makes
Spindrift's seclusion - and its empty views - even more impressive.
There's a beach-hut feel, but most beach huts lack a rain
shower, a barbecue or quite such a comfortable bed.